


A Beginner's Guide to Destroying the Moon

by Windybird



Series: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots [3]
Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Bisexual Female Character, Childhood Trauma, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, F/M, Hedonism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Mentors, Multi, Self-Hatred, Self-Sacrifice, Slow Burn, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, V Needs A Hug (Cyberpunk 2077), codependent relationships, v-centric
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:48:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29361288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Windybird/pseuds/Windybird
Summary: They couldn’t arrest her for a heist well-executed enough that they didn’t have a single piece of raw evidence to prove she was the one who did it, but it turns out that they could offer her a record deal based on the conjecture that came out of what happened at the Crystal Palace. Personally, V thought that her and Johnny’s little Arasaka suicide run was far more impressive, but Kerry and Rogue had both assured her that she would most definitely be slapped with terrorist charges should she live up to it, so she hadn't.Instead, she’d signed MSM’s contract, and she bought a mansion smack next to Kerry’s, and she went on Ziggy’s show with Us Cracks and made up some bullshit about being the girls’ long-lost American cousin, like the PR team had instructed her to. A week later, and quadruplet porn had become the topmost ranking XBD category worldwide.She tried not to feel too accomplished at that.˚ ˚ ˚ ˚Or, the one in which a post-Path of Glory V is planning on spending the rest of her foreseeable days in utter debauchery, but the resurrection of one Johnny Silverhand by a dying Arasaka in a final attempt to save the company has other plans in mind.
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand & V, Johnny Silverhand/V, Judy Alvarez/V (Mentioned)
Series: Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2168328
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	A Beginner's Guide to Destroying the Moon

“Say, V,” Red Menace says, over the smoking bowl of pot. “What’s your real name, anyway?”

To her credit, V doesn’t tense from where she’s laying down on the chaise. The bellboy cheerfully informed them that it was a 20th-century relic, one that Linda Oz had ever so graciously donated to her favorite hotel, and one that V was currently using to kick up her feet and press her finger into a small hole in the faded silk upholstery, wriggling like a pale pink worm beneath the surface.

“V’s my real name,” she says, and feels proud of how her voice doesn’t rasp, despite the smoke still burning there.

Purple Force, who’s perched on the chaise’s arm, scoffs, distinctly unladylike.

“You mean to say that your parents named you V?” She asks, not unkindly more than bluntly curious. V reluctantly tears her gaze away from her finger beneath the silk to glance over at Purple Force, who’s staring at her expectantly.

“You mean to say that your parents named you Purple Force?” V counters. They stare at each other for a beat, but Purple Force breaks first; a grin splits across her face, and then they’re both cracking up with laughter.

“I bet I can guess your name, V,” Blue Moon chirps, picking up the blunt with dainty fingers, and V grins.

“Oh, yeah?” She asks challengingly. “I’ll give you three guesses. If you don’t guess it, I’m going to finish that blunt all by myself, and there’s nothing any of you can do about it.”

“Hey,” Red Menace whines, but V’s attention is entirely on Blue Moon now- and the blunt in her hand.

“Valerie,” Blue Moon says, quick as a flash.

“Nope,” V says.

“Veronica,” comes a split second later.

“Nu-uh.”

“Victoria?” The answer comes more hesitantly than the others, and V doesn’t try to suppress the huge smile that splits across her face. She makes grabby hands at the blunt, feeling too sluggish and relaxed to lean across the chaise and get it herself.

Blue Moon hands it over, a disgruntled look on her face.

“Sorry, choom,” V tells her, not feeling very sorry at all as she lifts the blunt to her lips, letting the smoke burn down her throat all sweet and hot. “You’re never gonna guess it. It doesn’t begin with a ‘V’, for starters.” 

Blue Moon sputters with indignation as V takes another hit. Maybe it’s not smart to get super fucked up, especially when they need to get up bright and early tomorrow morning to be shuttled off across Germany, but this is good shit. Like, Good Shit. Purple Force’s cousin who moved to Bamberg with her wife last year started a weed dispensary- all organic, none of the regular synth shit you can find pretty much anywhere in Night City. It was a sheer stroke of luck that she happened to be in Berlin in time for their tour, or so Purple Force assured their disapproving manager.

“That was totally unfair,” Blue Moon mumbles, crossing her arms over her chest as she pouts at V, who smiles in sympathy. 

“I think I have a way to make you guys feel better,” she says lightly, but she can already feel her heartbeat amping up in anticipation as Blue Moon arches a perfectly manicured eyebrow at her. Purple Force’s ears perk up from her perch on the chaise, leaning close enough to V that she can feel the heat radiating from her thigh, pressing against the jut of V's shoulder.

“And how’s that?” Purple Force purrs, cocking her head to the side. A voice that sounds more Johnny than V hums its approval as V tugs her close, hands digging playfully into her hips. And though Purple Force- and Red Menace, and Blue Moon, for that matter- are so distinctly un-Judy like, if V closes her eyes, she can almost pretend that the global superstar straddling her lap is a braindance technician with a rapidly fading dye job. 

“Like this,” she murmurs, and closes the distance between them without opening her eyes. 

* * *

They couldn’t arrest her for a heist well-executed enough that they didn’t have a single piece of raw evidence to prove she was the one who did it, but it turns out that they _could_ offer her a record deal based on the conjecture that came out of what happened at the Crystal Palace. Personally, V thought that her and Johnny’s little Arasaka suicide run was far more impressive, but Kerry and Rogue had both assured her that she would most definitely be slapped with terrorist charges should she live up to it, so she hadn't.

Instead, she’d signed MSM’s contract- nevermind the fact that she couldn’t sing, or play pretty much any musical instrument, though Purple Force reassured her that they depended on direct-link auto tuners anyway; nevermind the fact that Rogue was so pissed off with her for shirking Afterlife business that she hadn’t spoken to her for a solid month afterwards; nevermind the fact that she was making the kind of lazerpop that would make Johnny’s ears implode-, and she bought a mansion smack next to Kerry’s that Judy would've hated based on the Swarovski crystal chandelier hanging in the foyer alone, and she went on Ziggy’s show with Us Cracks and made up some bullshit about being the girls’ long-lost American cousin, like the PR team had instructed her to. A week later, and quadruplet porn had become the topmost ranking XBD category worldwide.

She tried not to feel too accomplished at that, and failed. 

Ziggy had asked her what the best part about going from a small-time streetpunk merc to the Queen of the Afterlife and the hottest-selling thing on the shelves since Kerry Eurodyne had come out with his self-named album. That same little nagging voice in the back of her head- the one that was distinctly male, and approximately fifteen years older than her own- responded with a succinct, _Oh, just selling my soul and moral principles to become a cheap knock-off of what everyone expects a rockergirl to be like!_

Instead of saying that, though, V had adjusted her golden aviators- again, something that would’ve made Johnny’s eyes implode at the sight-, and grinned winningly at Ziggy, who had dyed his hair a dizzying conglomeration of purple and blue and red in honor of the Us Cracks’ appearances. And, at his tips, a distinct black dye that somehow matched V’s shade exactly, so dark it was almost blue. She was pretty sure she didn't want to know how he'd managed to achieve that. 

“The mansion made of solid marble, obviously,” she said dryly, and both Ziggy and Us Cracks tittered with laughter. She hadn’t been kidding, either. There’s a lot of perks to living in a mansion made of solid marble, but the best one, undoubtedly, is that you don’t have to put your cheek on the same place you shit to cool down after four shots of pure vodka. You can just collapse on the floor, on the beautifully cool floor imported from some tiny rural village in Italy, and it’s classier- and way, _way_ more effective- than resting against the toilet of a club bathroom that hasn’t been cleaned in over a decade.

At least, it _would’ve_ been classier, had it not been for the puddle of vomit congealing above her head.

 _Like a halo,_ she thinks giddily. Kerry’s gonna have a good, long laugh when he comes in to check on her tomorrow morning. Maybe even take a few photos for publicity- both the Us Cracks PR team and her agent from MSM had been gunning for the solidification of her role as the edgy, devil-may-care merc, and nothing quite screams classic rockergirl than collapsing in a puddle of your own sick.

That’s the main drawback to living in a mansion made of solid marble, though. Puke stains are almost impossible to get out. Blood, too, though there’s been less and less of that as _Heywood Girlhood_ hit the top singles chart a month and a half ago. She’s not speaking from experience- she’s rich enough that other people can clean up her bodily fluids now, though it’s usually Ker who hires them on her behalf-, but there are at least a good thirteen off-color beige stains around the foyer floor because of her.

And though the marble currently pressing against her skin is doing a fine job of not allowing her to pass out from heat stroke, she might just pass out anyway because of the smell. She smells like shit- worse than shit. She smells like an animal that’s crawled into a loaded dumpster inside a landfill to die in. She smells like rancid, organic meat left on the shelf of a black market butchery for too long. She smells like fetid craft beer that’s been brewed in a bathtub which used to house the corpses of unwilling organ donors.

“You smell like shit,” says a voice from the corner of the room. Going back to the basics, which is fine, though V thought she had a thing going there for a sec.

She watches with her cheek plastered in her own vomit as familiar leather shoes approach. And then the shoes grow a face. Rogue stares at her with a critical eye, enough so that she squirms- and proceeds to get more vomit in her hair in the process.

Rogue sighs, before extending a hand.

“You’re a mess,” she says, sounding more fond than exasperated. Or so V hopes.

She takes her hand, though the movement of being pulled upwards so abruptly makes the bile rise in her throat again. She has enough awareness to stagger towards the kitchen to puke into the trash can rather than on Rogue’s shoes, like the last time she came back from tour, but it’s still a close call.

“Sorry,” she manages to rasp out past heaves. “Think the airport bartender spit in my drink or somethin’.”

“Or you’ve been guzzling wine like it’s water,” Rogue retorts from somewhere behind her.

“Wasn’t wine,” V corrects automatically, wiping the trickles of vomit from the corners of her mouth. “Was vodka. And lime juice.”

Rogue lets out a sound that’s somewhere between a sigh and a groan.

They walk up the stairs together, Rogue’s arm a strong, steadying band across V’s torso. V never realized how many stairs are in her house before. There’s gotta be at least fifteen. Maybe even twenty.

“More, probably,” Rogue mutters, shaking her head, and it’s only then that V realizes she’s been speaking out loud.

“What’re you doing in my house?” V asks as they finally make it into the bathroom, where Rogue deposits her unceremoniously on the toilet to go start the shower. She’s not upset about it- she was more than a little afraid that Rogue was going to stop speaking to her, period- but Rogue’s shoulders tense like she’s been scolded, back still turned to V as she wiggles her fingers in the water spray.

“Needed to talk to you about Afterlife stuff,” She says, and then adds, more aggressively, “you know, the bar I gave _you?”_

“Band stuff’s been killing me,” V says, which isn’t a lie. Band stuff _has_ been killing her, albeit in less of a metaphorical way and more in a liver-which-is-rapidly-deteriorating way, along with the rest of her vital organs, but the latter has less to do with her new lifestyle and more to do with her own body’s failings. And God knows there are plenty of those.

“I’m _sorry_ , Rogue,” she adds pleadingly, when Rogue keeps her back turned to her. “S’rsly. I didn’t know that they’d extend the tour. Wouldn’t’ve gone if I did.”

“Yes, you would’ve,” Rogue says quietly, finally turning around to face her. The front of her shirt’s gotten all wet, though she doesn’t seem to have noticed. “If only for the free liquor.”

“I have that at the Afterlife,” V points out, smiling to show that she’s kidding, though it feels more like a grimace. Her facial muscles are permanently fucked up from how much she’s been forced to smile on tour, even with the Us Cracks PR team deciding to showcase her as their edgy American cousin. Apparently, edgy American cousins are still forced to grin like maniacs in between sets.

“You and I both know that European liquor hits differently,” Rogue says, face remaining impassive, and V heaves a sigh.

“Okay, Rogue,” she says, rubbing her eyes tiredly. “What’s the biz at the Afterlife?”

“We’re not having that conversation when you’re drenched in your own vomit,” Rogue tells her, crossing her arms over her chest. “Strip.”

There’s an excellent joke about Rogue using V’s inebriated state to finally get a free strip show somewhere in there, but V doesn’t have it in her to make it. She barely has it in her to break free of the green leotard which has quickly become her body’s spandex prison over the course of a month. Rogue has to levy her left foot against the bathroom wall just to peel the first sleeve off V’s arm, which sticks like a glue to her skin thanks to seven days of accumulated sweat.

“Jesus, V,” Rogue says, looking vaguely queasy as she moves on to the other sleeve. “I’d expect this kind of shit from Johnny, not you.”

She doesn’t know how to respond to that without bursting into drunken tears and mortifying Rogue even further, so instead she mumbles, “Has my cat been fed?”

Rogue blinks.

“Mr. Nibbles?” She asks finally, and V winces.

“Just Nibbles,” she corrects, lifting her left leg up dutifully as Rogue pushes the spandex downwards. She thinks, idly, that this must be what it feels like to have a mom undress you for a bath. Or like a grandmother who didn’t wince at the sight of you, anyway. “He doesn’t like it when you give ‘im an honorific.”

“Let me guess,” says Rogue, huffing as she finally frees V’s leg from the hateful green leotard. V has to grab Rogue’s shoulder to avoid falling off the toilet. “You’re talked to your cat enough times that you’re speaking from experience?”

V doesn’t say anything, but her silence is damning enough.

“Yes, he’s been fed,” Rogue tells her after a beat. “Kerry came ‘round a few times. He’s worried about you, y’know. Him and me both.”

V’s spared from trying to answer that with something intelligible, because the leotard finally- _finally-_ peels off the rest of her body, landing in a sticky, biohazardous heap at Rogue’s feet. V gasps with relief, head lolling to meet the toilet tank, but Rogue doesn’t allow her to relish in the feeling of being freed from her spandex prison for long.

“C’mon, V,” she says, lifting V’s arm over her shoulder. “Don’t make me shove you into the shower.”

V mumbles her discontent, but allows Rogue to lift her up from the toilet anyway. She stumbles blindly towards the shower spray, bracing herself against the wall so she can lift her head up towards it like she’s receiving some sort of holy benediction. Rogue mutters something she can’t hear past the spray, and then the bathroom door is closing, and she’s alone.

She resists the urge to call out for Rogue like a lost child. Instead, she fumbles blindly to remove her hair ties. But instead of feeling the heavy weight of her hair settling on her back, she finds that her hair stays in the same position, buns fused on either side of her skull from sweat and vomit and time.

“Gross,” she mutters. Massaging the vomit and sweat out of her hair takes a solid five minutes, and attempting to comb out the tangles thirty. By the time she emerges, skin scrubbed pink and stomach empty from another upheaval that she watched creep towards the shower drain with hooded eyes, Rogue’s managed to wrangle up some takeout downstairs. She can smell the steamed vegetables, the chicken fried rice-

“Chinese, nice,” V comments as she walks down the stairs, clad in nothing but a towel, and Rogue looks up with a raised eyebrow. She feels slightly more sobered up, though not enough to take her grip off the bannister, and she feels accomplished when she doesn’t face-plant into the puddle of vomit she’s left on the floor just beyond the staircase.

“It might be a little cold,” Rogue comments from her perch on the dining chair’s armrest. “You were in there for a long time.”

“Had to get all the vomit out, didn’t I?” V asks as she takes a seat beside Rogue, nearly fainting with delight as the smell of grease and soy sauce wafts over. A ghost of a smile passes over Rogue’s face.

“C’mon, kid,” she says, touching V’s bare shoulder gently. “You gotta get something in that stomach of yours, or I’ll sic Mama Welles on you. She scared the shit out of Kerry and me the last time we were here, y’know.”

Something more potent than guilt lances through V as she reaches over the table for a platterful of mixed vegetables.

“She was here?” she asks, aiming for casual and falling just short.

Rogue hums affirmative, watching her face carefully.

“She wanted to bring over leftover food from Jackie’s birthday dinner,” she says. “Elote and chiloques, I think she said. Smelled good as hell, too.”

V’s stomach drops as she stares at Rogue, food left forgotten on her plate. She vaguely remembers listening to a voicemail about the dinner on Sunday- well after the tour ended. But then Red Menace asked if she wanted to join them on a bender, and that bender ended up being three days long, getting utterly shit-faced…

While Mama Welles and Pepe and Misty were gathered solemnly around a table, remembering a son and friend who wouldn’t have died had it not been for V, she was probably puking her guts up in some skeevy club bathroom in Germany while Blue Moon delicately held her fringe back.

“You okay there, V?” Rogue asks, and it’s only then that V realizes she’s gripping her fork tight enough that her knuckles are beginning to turn white. She forces herself to relax.

“Peachy,” she mutters, sounding as hollow as she feels. “What, um, what’s been happening at the Afterlife?”

“ _Eat_ ,” Rogue says, stressing the syllable with unnecessary emphasis. “And then we’ll talk.”

V pulls a face, but Rogue remains unmoved. Sighing, V spears a broccoli stem and chews exaggeratedly slowly, though her mockery quickly fades into something more genuine as the weight of food moves through her throat for what feels like the first time in days. Probably it has been; the only non-liquid she can remember consuming in the past week were the free olives on the counter in that bar in Belgium.

It takes four more mouthfuls before Rogue seems content, leaning back against her chair as she watches V eat.

“There was an Arasaka agent crawling around the Afterlife a few days ago,” she says casually, and V nearly chokes on her Kung Pao chicken. She thumps her chest a few times before the chicken finally dislodges from her throat.

“Sorry, _what?”_ V gasps, eyes watering as she blindly reaches over for a can of Diet Coke. Rogue hands it to her, a look of amusement on her face as she swallows greedily.

“Don’t worry, kid,” she says, the laughter barely restrained in her voice as V sets the cup down on the table. “Arasaka won’t be strong enough to launch a counter-attack any time soon. If yours and Johnny’s little suicide run didn’t scare them off your tail entirely before, that stunt you pulled at the Crystal Palace definitely finished the job. They’re not coming for you- or anyone else, believe me.

“No, this guy was an ex-Arasaka employee- an important one, or so he claimed. Said he had news he wanted to share with the Queen of the Afterlife. When I told him the reigning monarch was on a tour in Europe, and whether I might rely a message to Her Majesty-“

“Rogue _._ ”

Rogue’s lips quirk upwards.

“I had to deal with that sort of talk for years, you know,” she tells her loftily, but her amusement fades when she sees the expression on V’s face. “He made me swear to secrecy before he said anything, but when he did, it was only to give me this before leaving. He never even gave me a name, just said that it came directly from Arasaka headquarters.”

She brandishes a chip from her pocket. Both of them stare at it for a beat, like they’re expecting it to explode in Rogue’s hand. When it doesn’t, V wipes her greasy fingers on her towel and gingerly takes it from her, still half-expecting it to spontaneously combust. It looks innocuous enough, but…

“Virus?” She hazards, but even as she speaks, knows it’s not the right answer. Too obvious. Besides, no self-respecting assassin would go to _her_ club in broad daylight to hand over his own weapon for her to implement. There would be way easier ways to kill her; just dressing up as a European bartender and slipping something into her drink would’ve sufficed.

“Couldn’t be,” Rogue says, shaking her head. Then, taking a breath, she adds, “I’d know. I tried it myself.”

V stares at her.

“What the fuck,” she says, the words curdling hot and ugly in her throat.

“Before you say anything-“ Rogue begins, but V cuts her off, trying to find the right words for the sudden heat that burns in her chest and prickles behind her eyes.

“What the _fuck_ , Rogue?” She repeats, growing angrier with each syllable. “For all you knew, it could’ve been a virus! It could’ve been _worse_ than a virus!”

“You done?” Rogue asks, obviously not impressed by this admonishment. Her loftiness is _infuriating,_ but when V opens her mouth to say as much, Rogue spears a piece of chicken and shoves it through V’s parted lips, quick as a flash.

“It wasn’t a virus,” Rogue says, watching V’s jaw work angrily as she chews. “I don’t know _what_ it was. It was, like, lines of code that I couldn’t parse through… I don’t know if I didn’t have the right equipment for it or what, but I’d never seen anything like it in my life.”

By the time V finishes swallowing, the anger’s still burning hot in her throat, but it’s tempered by curiosity.

“What would an ex-Arasaka agent want to give me except a bullet in the brain?” She asks, staring at the chip like it’ll somehow answer her question.

“You tell me,” Rogue murmurs. When V tears her gaze away from the chip to look up at her, she’s staring at her with a furrowed brow, gnawing on her bottom lip.

“Think it’s another personality construct?” She asks, only half-joking, and V can’t suppress the shudder that ripples through her.

“Sure as hell hope not,” she mutters, before sighing. “Not like it could make my body deteriorate _more,_ at least.”

Rogue’s bottom lip is still trapped between her teeth.

“You sure you’re up for this?” She asks quietly. “We can wait for tomorrow. Emerson’s trying to find the Arasaka agent as we speak. Maybe-“

“Nah, Rogue,” V says, just as quietly. “Let’s get this shit over with.”

Before Rogue can say anything else, V slots the chip in.

Nothing happens at first, which is a little anti-climactic. All she sees is Rogue’s worried face, the small mountain of food still left on her plate, the towel which now resembles an off-color beige than the pearly white it used to be before she smeared Chinese food all over it, and then-

“Whoa,” V gasps. Lines of code, just like Rogue said, but then something weird happens. The code becomes three-dimensional, for lack of a better term, shifting and congealing together into a… map? And at its center, past huge, towering walls of code, a pinprick of light so bright that it almost burns to look at it directly, encapsulated in the form of a woman, tall as a tower- nearly as tall as the walls that surround her. And below her, dark, churning shapes- composed entirely of garbled, clumped lines of code- on every side, an entire sea of them. But where they’re most concentrated is miles away from the woman, surrounding a small cluster of dots as bright as the one locked up in the woman-tower.

Before V can process this, strange colors flash before her eyes, and the map dissolves into what looks like a diehard Samurai fan forum. Most of it’s unparsable jibberish, but there’s one post from _Kerry &Johnny4Eva, _whose words seem to glow with a dull light. 

_JOHNNY SILVERHAND ISNT DEAD!!!_ is the title of the post, which read as follows:

_Since the LEGENDARY attack on Arasaka, ppl have been wondering where Johnny’s body was buried. Well, Im here to tell u all that it WASNT buried after all!! True fans who KNEW who was behind the nukes went directly into the noxious pile of rubble that used to be Arasaka Tower to recover Johnny Silverhand’s dying- NOT DEAD- body and encase it in a cryogenic freezer that would save it for a future where we would be able to resuscitate him, a future where Arasaka would be good and gone for GOOD!!! And to those nay-sayers out there who think Im lying, my DAD and his BROTHER were the ones who helped recover his body and hide the freezer somewhere where ‘Saka could never find it! They worked on a Trauma Team task force that were SPECIFICALLY hired to create highly advanced cryogenic freezers for the richest clients!! They lost their JOBS and were sentenced to YEARS in prison bcuz of what they did, but they did it so we could all have a better future! If you want to pass on the TRUTH about Johnny Silverhand’s so-called “death,” contact me at 818-NVR-FADE!!!_

**_Arkangele_ **

_lol someone call trauma team this guys going thru an aneurysm_

**_Lazrpop_suck_my_dik_ **

_choom i think i speak for all of us when i say what the fuck r u talking abt_

**_Rckrgrrl_ **

_brb gonna send this dude pics of my feet LOLLL_

**_Sam234_ **

_I left a message on your voicemail; I look forward to hearing from you soon._

V stares at the post uncomprehendingly, until the forum suddenly dissolves and Rogue’s face appears right in front of her, hands planted on either side of her skull.

“V!” She snaps, like she’s been saying it for a while now. Her face is so white, it almost glows in the dim light of the kitchen. “Christ, _say something!”_

V opens her mouth to speak, and a torrent of vomit comes out instead.

The next few minutes are a blur of being unceremoniously pushed back down into her chair as Rogue shoves her unfinished can of Diet Coke in front of her and starts scrubbing at the mess she’s made, muttering angrily to herself all the while- something along the lines of, “not your babysitter,” and, “why is it always me?”, but V can’t be too sure; her ears are ringing, and her throat is burning, and she feels worse than she had when she collapsed into a puddle of her own sick in the foyer.

She only comes back to herself when Rogue starts dabbing at her mouth with a fresh paper towel. “Dabbing” isn’t the right word; it’s more like she’s trying to scrub her lips off, but it serves to bring V back to herself, if only a little bit.

Rogue notices. She leans back, depositing the paper towel onto the table, and though her face is still pale with worry, her features are contorted in anger.

“What the fuck,” she asks, breathing heavily through her nose, “was _that_?”

“I- I don’t know,” V whispers, sounding younger than she’s heard herself sound in years. “I- there was a map, at first? I think it was a map of the Blackwall, but- but that’s impossible, nobody’s been able to chart- and then there was a Samurai forum, and someone’s dad and uncle had taken Johnny’s body from Arasaka-?”

“Slow down there, V,” Rogue instructs, and the steadying pressure of her hands on V’s shoulder returns once more. Vaguely, she notes that her towel’s slipped past her chest in the sudden chaos, but Rogue doesn’t seem to notice, eyes fixed solely on V’s face. “I can barely understand a word you’re saying.”

“I think Arasaka’s mapped out the Blackwall,” V says, turning eyes bright with tears onto Rogue. “I think they’re trying to bring Johnny back.”

**Author's Note:**

> reuploaded; original was messy af since I'd jotted it down in an emotional heap after replaying the Path of Glory ending for maybe the billionth time. also- i want to add that up until five minutes ago, i genuinely had no idea that the canonical name for V was literally Valerie/Vincent. Like, I genuinely thought that the brush-off they give Angel/Skye at Clouds was less a confirmation of the name and more a gentle mockery of how obvious those names would be for somebody named V?? someone tell me that they also dont have working brain cells/they too gave v an incredibly highfalutin name that has literally nothing to do with their initial pls and thank u


End file.
